Before Kirby Smart took the field for the first time this spring with his Georgia football team, he was asked what he wanted to see in the 15 practices ahead.
Smart was melding much of the nation’s No. 2 ranked recruiting class with holdovers from a team that won the SEC championship and reached the College Football Playoff quarterfinals last season.
“Yeah, I want to see the fire,” he said. “I want to see the passion, the energy. I want to see who wants to be a good football player, who really cares about this game. They care more about the game than they do about their NIL revenue stream.”
It’s clear now as Georgia holds its 10th spring practice Tuesday, Smart is drilling those points home.
Again and again and again.
“Physical, passion, fire and energy,” Smart told his players before they held their first spring scrimmage Saturday in Sanford Stadium in a video put out on social media by the program.
Georgia won back-to-back national championships with those traits in 2021 and 2022 even if they may not have been spoken like the buzzwords of connection, composure, resilience and toughness.
Now the team has players stepping into larger roles like on the offensive line where the Bulldogs lost four starters.
“That’s one of the things we’re really talking about as a program is the fire,” offensive tackle Monroe Freeling said. “Like what do you really have in yourself that you want to, I guess, really apply. What’s your fire? What gets you going? Who loves the game? I think that’s what we’re really applying to ourselves this year.”
There was no lack of passion, fire or energy from linebacker Nakobe Dean in the national championship game against Alabama to end the 2021 season.
Dean got in fellow linebacker Channing Tindall’s face when Tindall was indecisive on an assignment, something Tindall admitted was a mistake.
“If it took jumping on Channing’s butt then he was going to do it because he was going to hold Channing accountable for doing his job,” Smart later said.
Georgia’s next wave of players at the position seem to bring what Smart is looking for not just because of their physical and athletic talents, but how they use it.
“As a defense, I feel we have a lot of young guys and we have a lot of passion and energy,” sophomore inside linebacker Justin Williams said. “I just feel like we need to work on that passion and energy and be more consistent. That’s whether for me, for everybody on the football field from the ones to the threes to the twos.”
Smart has started to ask players at the end of practices who he thinks is the hardest worker.
“Like, who works the hardest?,” he said. “Who practices the hardest when you watch the tape? Who do you say has that passion and fire that’s sometimes lacking all over college football now? It’s a different climate in college football.
Williams and fellow inside linebacker Chris Cole have been mentioned by teammates multiple times as players that practice hard.
Smart told Josh Pate of CBSSports.com that Georgia’s staff has begun to look more beyond size and speed and to look deeper when recruiting to see if a player practices with passion.
“Does he love it?” Smart said.
Georgia’s roster from top to bottom measures up with just everybody it plays on paper or exceeds their talent, but that doesn’t always translate in final outcomes.
“Usually the team that plays hardest wins,” Smart said. “I know everybody thinks it’s just we’re more talented, but there’s a whole lot to how hard you play and how much you care about it. My goal is to find out how hard do you want to play, how much do you really want to be great, because if you do, it will show by how you practice.”
It’s why when Smart was asked a couple of weeks ago about how the cornerbacks are looking, he said: “I just want to see fire and compete out of everybody …Competitive is so hard to find nowadays because kids like to take the easy way out, and it’s not easy here.”
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